"Lord of the Flies may be one of the most powerful (and widely taught) novels in postwar English literature, but until now, a comprehensive biography of William Golding has not been available. One suspects this may be because of the sheer difficulty of attaining some sort of perspective on the writer, whose complicated personality and enigmatic, symbol-laden works present prospective biographers with a formidable literary-psychological knot. And yet [John] Carey's biography soars, presenting a nuanced and sensitive portrait of the small-town schoolteacher with a proclivity for Greek mythology and abiding class issues, the wartime ship's captain perennially drawn to the power of the sea, and the extraordinarily talented (if often blocked) writer who used fiction to plumb the murky depths of his subconscious."—Booklist (starred review)